


Not an End After All

by tellers



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Custom Shepard (Mass Effect), Eventual Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, F/M, Leigh Shepard, Mass Effect 3, No Shepard without Vakarian, Post-Mass Effect 3, Post-Reaper War, Romance, Shepard Survives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-02-04 11:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12770328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tellers/pseuds/tellers
Summary: It’s been fifteen months since her body was recovered from the rubble of Ground Zero.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been fifteen months since her body was recovered from the rubble of Ground Zero.

Fifteen months of grueling reconstruction of her bones and muscles and the Cerberus-built parts of her that were one of the few reasons she survived at all. Gratefulness is embedded into her skin from the time when her mother was still alive – the stubborn ease of Anna Shepard’s graciousness often left Leigh speechless. Shepard herself can’t for the life of her feel grateful for Cerberus without feeling a jab of guilt-ridden anger boil at the bottom of her stomach, like a wound that keeps pestering her again and again. Guilt is as easy for her as gratefulness was for her mother. But then again that guilt is something she’s befriended over the time she’s had to spend more or less bed-bound.

That comes with being awake, she supposes. The first eight months she spent mostly asleep, in a drug-induced coma that was supposed to help with her healing. Considering the pain she’s had every day since then, she has to think being asleep was a blessing. Sleep like that didn’t have any dreams. There was just blackness and sometimes colors that resembled the shields she used to see from the windows of the Normandy. A mess of blues and violets dancing against a sheet of black, like she’d be watching cold-hued northern lights dance behind her eyelids. Of course the memory of this after she awoke felt distant, like her brain had been turned off for too long – and sometimes she felt like the whole thing was just her imagination trying to fill in the months of nothing in her head. Even with the months spent unconscious, poked, prodded, and on the verge of existing, her body still resembles the mess it was before Project Lazarus was started, but for better or worse she’s been awake. More or less, at least.

The few times she’s braved to look into a mirror have been disorienting. It’s like she’s getting used to a rebuilt version of herself, even if little has changed. She thought the biggest shock should’ve come after Cerberus and their reconstruction of her, but this post-Reaper-war Shepard is worse.

She's not what she was. Her _body_ is not what it was. The strong lines of muscles have withered away and left behind what she can only call a ghost of herself. It’s hard to think back on a time when she was a worthy opponent to creatures thrice her size, when getting out of bed and doing her mandatory walks around the hospital is too much of work. Despite the physical therapy and the new plates on her legs to aid the bones the remnants of the Catalyst cracked, there’s still a sway in her step that wasn’t there before. She tries to hide it most of the time, with that pride of hers clinging so tight to her skin that whatever the ache and cost of her resilience is, she can’t let that vulnerability show.

It's not a limp (even if her doctor has called it that more than once), but whatever it is, it's an all-too visible reminder of what has happened to her. It’s enough that she’s bound to a bed, unable to help with anything aside from giving intel on how the destruction of Reapers came to be, but to visibly be even more frail than she lets on? Not a chance. And as if she needed matters to be made worse, the subject of Reapers has been chewed dry a long time ago. Everyone knows what happened and what was left behind, which leaves her little to no role in the world that's come after the war.

She’s scarred, which in itself is nothing new, but the frames of those scars are unfamiliar. An ugly pallor clings to her naturally brown skin and the soft curls she usually keeps short have grown to her shoulders. The lines of her muscles aren’t as sharp as they used to be, thanks to the lack of virtually any kind of movement aside from hobbling to meet the daily walking requirements her nurses push on her, let alone her rigorous training routine. Yet again one thing of the past that feels like it was in another life entirely.

All in all the word she’d describe herself now is soft, and as hard as she tries to convince herself it doesn’t matter (she’s _alive_ , shouldn't that be good enough?), it definitely does. In features that don’t feel like her Shepard finds a resemblance to her mother, another face so long gone she doesn’t know if her memory is failing her on that, too.

Or maybe it’s trying to find a silver lining amongst the rubble.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first work anywhere ever, so if I'm 100% honest I'm more than a little terrified. Mass Effect has been my lifeblood for a small eternity now and I think it's that love that gave me the courage to kick myself in the butt and put this out there.
> 
> This is basically a snippet of the thing I've been working on, but if this proves to be a pleasant read to even some, I'll definitely work on getting more out there. Please note that I'm not a native speaker and since there has been no proofreader other than me, all the mistakes (which I'm sure there are many) are mine.
> 
> Until next time (I hope!) – please, don't hesitate to leave a comment! ♥


	2. Chapter 2

With Shepard’s body slowly healing, the world around her was growing back into its former glory – or at least something not resembling a post-war ruin of something that once was.

As she sits on the edge of her hospital bed, her hands holding tight to the edge of the mattress, even her doctor’s steady mumble can’t pull her focus away from the view opening from the wall-wide windows to her right. It’s greener now, with people working hard on preserving any kind of plants they possibly can. With no help from the machines that used to produce oxygen and help the greenery to keep everything balanced, the planet had grown hot. Big steps had been made, crews working tirelessly to restore Earth to its former glory, but with the Reapers not only attacking cities but carefully preserved forests as well, there was still some way to go.

After all, fifteen months wasn’t that long. To her it of course was, with being tied to a hospital bed with no company save for the doctors and nurses and some Alliance bigshots who came to honor her (and the memory of Anderson). But aside from that, she was alone. With no crew and no way to even locate them, everything felt even more out of place than it was. Time was moving slow, the world was rebuilding itself. _Everything_ was moving faster than her.

Come to think of it, it was almost as if the hospital had been built around her. With the walls growing stronger and hallways not resembling battlefields anymore, something about it made Shepard feel like she no longer belonged. She was brought in when the chaos was still very much there, and she can’t help but feel that’s how it was supposed to be. She belonged in the middle of chaos; in that place between crisis control and battlefield. Not among sterile sheets and white rooms; in the middle of people who had actual problems and not just a leg that refused to cooperate.

The blood she’d bled to the concrete around Ground Zero had been painted over. The streets were cleared of rubble the Reapers had torn from the buildings alongside them, and whatever was left of ships and flotillas were hoisted back into space. Some remained empty, whereas some had refugees of other galaxies that were now trapped in Earth’s airspace – refusing to inhabit its ground longer than necessary.

This all she’s got from staring out of the windows all around the hospital and using her omni-tool's batteries to scroll through every possible database available. She’s been on bed-rest too long to even remember what smelling fresh air for longer than fifteen minutes is like, or how it feels to have the wind blow on your skin instead of stale air-conditioning. She’s not been allowed to take her walks outside, bound to wander the growing corridors of the hospital like a lost child.

Even her daily talks were closer to a habit than anything else. The people at the hospital had limited knowledge (or at least limited desire to talk) about the subjects Shepard craved to know of. Omni-tools’ batteries were harder to come by, and not everyone was contactable in the first place. The Alliance and C-Sec were silent, let alone the newly rebuilt council. She was still very capable of being a pain in the ass, but with her being tied to a hospital bed with limited resources and more contamination-minimizing isolation hours than she could count, ignoring her was much easier than it would've been with the threat of her coming (sometimes quite literally) knocking on their doors.

At some point it became difficult to come up with the right questions to squeeze even some information out of the people around her, when the people who would’ve known what to say even without her asking are who knows how many galaxies away. _The_ person.

 

It’s the doctor’s voice that brings her out of her thoughts.

“You’re growing stronger every day, commander,” Urstan Jirana, her very dedicated salarian doctor, says while fiddling with their omni-tool. Shepard can’t help the scoff that escapes her lips as she shifts on the edge of the hospital bed and adjusts that ever-throbbing leg of hers.

“Wish I could share your sentiment on that.”

Jirana casts a look over their omni-tool that looks almost cheeky. “Medically speaking, you’re getting better. I can’t quarrel with what your inner voice is saying, Shepard.” Shepard’s translator can’t pick up tones of sarcasm (and reading salarians definitely isn’t her strongest suit), but she dares to guess that’s exactly what she just got a dose of.

Shepard holds in a sigh and pulls her back straighter. She’s being petty and childish, and actually feels sort of glad that Jirana isn’t having any of it. She readjusts her attitude and draws in a breath. “You were saying?”

“Your leg’s not doing as well as I’d hope considering the time it’s had to heal, but other than that, you seem to be doing just fine.”

_Just fine_ doesn’t exactly have a ring of promise in it, but it’s good enough for now. Shepard stays silent for a beat, waiting to see if the doctor will continue, but then ends up making her impatient inquiry anyway. “Does that mean you’re discharging me?“

Jirana switches their omni-tool off and looks over to Shepard. “Yes. Though I’ve heard there’s arrangements to be made, so I’ll be holding on to your discharge file until tomorrow.”

_Arrangements_. A fancy word for “you don’t have a home or an apartment to go to, so you’re stuck in here until you do”. But just for a day. That wasn’t even half as bad.

“Thank you.“  
“Thank yourself, commander. You’ve done well.”

 

And with that Jirana is on their way to do whatever it is that a doctor of their caliber does when they’re not attending to pain-in-the-ass cases like her. Shepard sighs and lets her head tilt back so that she’s able to look at the ceiling. _Just a day more_.

She drops her chin and gets ready to push herself up to stand when her omni-tool pings with a sound she’s still not quite used to (her state-of-the-art tool and its batteries are the one thing she’s had to let go of in the light of the new energy and electricity regulations).

The flickering image of Naseera, an asari technician, comes into view. Naseera’s a part of the crew working on finding ways to communicate with galaxies that’ve been out of reach since what happened with Mass Relays, and possibly the only person Shepard’s really been in tight contact with. The webs were starting to grow, with scientists finding new wave-lengths to tune communicators into, and even new elements that would soon be able to enable traveling between galaxies again. At least that was the wish on everyone's minds.

 

“Shepard.”  
“A bit early for your weekly report.“

“That’s because this isn’t one of those.” Shepard can’t read the expression on Naseera’s face, but can’t decide whether it’s because of the quality of the image or her face in general. “I thought you should be the first to hear – haven’t reported this in, yet.“

Shepard feels a wave of cold shivers run down her spine. That's a premise that can’t follow up to anything good. She's been waiting for news too long to expect them to be favorable, and too long to harbor hopes of anything but finding the remains of her ship.

Shepard can’t bring herself to say anything, just silently waits for whatever Naseera has to come.

 

“We’ve been in contact with the Normandy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! Kind of a lot of world-building in this and a salarian doctor that I sort of fell in love with (but who can never fill the void Mordin left), and, to top that, we're getting very close to what I'm both excited and terrified to write (insert some screeching here)!
> 
> I'd like to thank you all so much for your love and the support for what I've got so far! You've given me confidence to write more of this and I'm very grateful for that. As always with myself as the only editor here, all errors that may appear are mine.
> 
> Please, don't hesitate to leave a comment! ♥


	3. Chapter 3

“From what they told us, they’ll be in Earth’s airspace in three weeks.”

Shepard feels like someone has struck her with the butt of their rifle. She’s walking around Naseera’s workshop, circling the empty space between all of her equipment and the place Naseera herself is standing in. Her leg is causing her gait to slightly waver and the throbbing pain to crawl its way up her knee and straight to her back. It's the last thing she needs right now, but tries her best to focus on what's actually at hand.

She turns to look at Naseera, whose coolness while working with whatever gadget is in her hands is enough to make Shepard remember her place. She's a known military officer, not a worrying civilian, and the last thing she should be doing was be distraught while she didn’t even know all the facts about the situation. Contact with the ship had been made, and with Naseera’s limited knowledge of Normandy’s personnel records, the best guess for who she’d been talking to would’ve been Joker. That Shepard had to already be thankful for – she wouldn’t have trusted anyone else to be able to bring both the ship and the crew to the Earth in one piece.

 

“How the hell did they manage it?”

“Turns out we’re not the only ones who’ve been working on getting everything back in order. And from what I gathered, the ship’s been stuck somewhere with decent resources that helped the situation.”

 

Of course. What else had she really expected from them? Yes, she was stubborn, but damn it all if her crew wasn’t even worse. Every single one of them more hard-headed than the other. And considering all the things they’d been through, at this point their resourcefulness was top notch. So if they were able to not get decimated by the Reapers, this really was the only viable option. Or, in a somewhat perfect world, at least.

If only she had a way to know which of them she could even think about. Naseera said the communication link was so weak there was no chance to contact them until they were closer – and even then the Normandy might need to reserve all they had to make it all the way to Earth. The pain of not knowing anything about the ship would’ve been a welcomed friend in exchange for the way Shepard’s insides twisted at the idea of Normandy returning with just a selected few. She wanted to gut herself. She wanted to pull out everything that was enabling her to feel like this until there was something concrete to hold on to.

This was a feeling she'd never get used to. To hate the uncertainty but hate the knowing even more.

 

Shepard sighed, her hands finding their place at her hips as she straightened her back. She was alive, her ship had been found, and in a few weeks she’d have answers to questions that'd been jamming up her mind for several months now.  
“So what now?”

Naseera shrugged.  
“If their calculations are correct and there won’t be any setbacks, their ETA is at the beginning of September.”

“We just wait?”

Naseera turned to Shepard, her eyes flickering with a flash of sympathy as she moved her head into a nod. If Shepard knew her better, she might've had some basis for her suspicions that she saw a glimpse of relief mixed in there. She knew the toll of the post-war world they were in wasn’t just on her shoulders. Not many lost ships had made it back and the bags under Naseera’s eyes were a testament to that.

“We just wait.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five hundred years (or, you know, 9 months) later, I am back with a new chapter!
> 
> This is quite literally the shortest chapter in the world because my writing slump’s been ongoing FAR too long for me to force myself to write a long filler chapter just because. So here we are! A small lil update before we get to what everyone is really waiting for (I know I am) – and that will be much longer, too.
> 
> As I'm writing this, I'm about 50% done with the next chapter, so let it be known that I promise I won't take another nine months to get the next one out. I give you all the right to publicly shame me if I do. Meanwhile, thank you to everyone for your amazing support and patience while I've been in this potato-mode. Your comments have been SO sweet and definitely helped me get over my I-need-to-write-a-long-chapter-or-it's-not-a-chapter-at-all -state of mind. You're amazing and I could not be more grateful to have you on this journey with me.
> 
> As always, all errors that may appear are mine. I love you all and I'll see you in the next chapter! ♥


	4. Chapter 4

Shepard has to focus to keep herself from fidgeting.

 

The alarms had blared around forty minutes ago, with everyone then rushing to the landing zone to see what the long lost ship would be carrying—or if it would actually make it to Earth in the first place. Three weeks and two days were enough for the word to go around, and along with the personnel arranged there to take care of the crew once they’d disembark the ship, a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered around the landing zone.

 

Shepard had carefully scanned through the area (more than once by now), noting the team of twenty-something medical personnel standing next to their equipment and a squadron of medi-transporters, along with what seemed like a full platoon of Alliance soldiers. When she was told the arrangements for the arrival of the Normandy was all about immediate care for the crew and that she was _“allowed in the crowd”_ but nothing more, Shepard was relieved. The idea of standing there with the Alliance, clad in her uniform and the weight of her M-3 Predator at her hip, filled her with the sort of dread she wasn’t ready to face yet. Especially not in front of a crowd that openly referred to her as _a hero_ and _an icon_ , disregarding what her official statement had been about her role in defeating the Reapers.

 

Naseera is standing next to Shepard, somewhat scrutinizingly staring at the team of flight control people that she clearly would’ve wanted to be in the middle of. Apparently someone higher above had thought a communications specialist was not what this moment needed, even if Naseera was the first and only one who spoke to the crew in the first place. The asari sighs and shifts her weight from one foot to the other, being the sort of restless Shepard deep down hopes she could be.

“Nervous?” Naseera asks, her question directed to the stony figure of Shepard right next to her, her eyes still fixed to the landing zone. Shepard’s spine straightens even more as she pulls her shoulders back, arms firmly at her sides, everything about her wound tight.

 

“I don’t get nervous.”

It’s a blatant lie, one which she’s sure anyone could’ve seen right through, but to Shepard’s luck, her conversation partner seems to be too preoccupied by the view in front of them to ponder over the truthfulness in Shepard’s words. Naseera barely acknowledges her response, just nods and then lifts her chin a little higher as she tries to see through the team that’s started to gather even tighter around the LZ.

 

Shepard is focusing on the pale grey sky, eyes scanning every moving object with intent, until finally she sees it. A small speck in the distance at first, mistakable for any of the Alliance ships in Earth’s airspace, but slowly it starts to get more recognizable. The closer it gets, the clearer Shepard can hear the familiar rumble of the core. She can see how its sides are scratched and parts of the dark metal have been replaced with what look like mixed pieces; melded together into a more or less new hull; all evidence of a landing gone wrong. But it’s recognizable, and there’s no mistaking it. It’s definitely Normandy.

 

Watching the landing routine feels like the longest wait, with Shepard’s insides seeming to twist around themselves the more time goes by. She’s going through the motions in her head, imagining Joker in the cockpit with EDI by his side, the deft beeping of the Normandy’s systems as they prepare to land her safely. She can see Liara walking through the crew deck, followed by the crew that by now have to be anxious to find their way to Earth after such a long time gone. She can imagine everyone from engineering lining up to fill the elevator to join Vega and Cortez in the shuttle bay. She can imagine all of them waiting by the door under Normandy’s belly, a crowd of tired people whose hands Shepard would’ve laid her life on any given day.

 

If it takes forever for the ship to land, it takes another eternity for the gangway to finally be lowered and the sound of the airlock to reverberate through Shepard’s bones like a memory of a time long lost and long gone.

 

A stretcher is the first thing to appear. Carried by two people Shepard recognizes as Steve Cortez and Gabriella Daniels, a glimpse of a quarian enviro-suit with violet markings flashes before the medical team is already taking control and transferring the stretcher to their carrier. Shepard imagines glue to the soles of her boots to keep herself from running over, to not even think about going there and hovering and asking questions she desperately wants answers to.

 

Shepard turns her eyes to the steady flow of crew disembarking and talks sense into herself. They wouldn’t have kept Tali on board if she wasn’t alive. They wouldn’t carry her out like this if there was nothing to be done; they would’ve covered her face with something else than just the mask of her suit. Shepard breathes in and breathes out as the medi-carrier disappears from view, Dr. Chakwas the last to settle herself onto its seats.

 

She keeps count of all the people who come out. She runs through their personnel files in her head, forces her jammed up memory to remember faces and names and ranks and positions, while counting every pair of feet that walk down to the ground. With Normandy under her command, she’d known every single member of her crew by name. Those lost, those still serving; no one was without a name. Ever since the Crucible crushed her, however, details were sometimes harder to come by. Faces blended together and names seemed to be right on the tip of her tongue, but she’d fail to get them out. It was frustrating at best, but Shepard had some hope for it to get better. Even if it was the last flicker of hope she was still able to cling onto.

 

After the thirteenth (private April Rodriguez, security officer on the CIC), Liara emerges. Her blue skin seems less vibrant than what Shepard remembers it as, and the way her uniform sags around her waist leaves an unease to the bottom of Shepard’s stomach. She's guided to another transporter, helped up to a seat by an Alliance soldier, and Shepard almost misses how four other crew members climb aboard the transporter before it too sets off. She scolds herself and focuses, determined not to miss even one member of the crew she’s dragged through hell and high water.

 

Two other stretchers follow. Specialist Traynor is carried out by James Vega and a guard she’s sure she’s seen in the War Room but can’t remember the name of, and Ashley Williams escorts out the mass sergeant with private Campbell. before the face of her helmsman comes into Shepard’s view.

 

Joker's limp is more prominent than it's ever been, which has Shepard running through all the different scenarios her pilot might have had to go through to have his legs give out on him again. She’d seen Chakwas come out of the ship, but despite her vast knowledge of Joker’s syndrome, if they’d run out of his meds Shepard could only speculate the state he was truly in. A flair of brief relief blooms into her though as she sees him pushing an asari EMT out of his way as they try to come aid him to get up on the transporter. At least he was well enough to still be his stubborn self.

 

Garrus is the last one.

 

Shepard sees his tall frame before she manages to even register it's him. His visor is off, the blue light of it nowhere to be seen, and he's not wearing a full armor. Considering the fixes made to Normandy’s hull, Shepard can't help but speculate whether he'd offered his armor to help with the repairs. It sounds like something he would come up with. He's in the transporter, folding himself down next to Joker, before Shepard has time to wonder if he searched for her in the crowd.

 

After twenty-two minutes of watching her crew disembark the Normandy, thirty-three is the total of her count.

 

The crowd starts to scatter the moment they see the Alliance soldiers walk up into the Normandy to make sure it’s been cleared out. Before Shepard has the chance to even look for them, Dr. Jirana is already standing in front of her, their fingers flickering above the orange glow of their omni-tool.

 

“Commander. They’ll be under quarantine for 24 hours; you will be notified when you’re allowed to visit,” Jirana says, prompt and to-the-point, which Shepard couldn’t be more grateful for. “Keep your omni-tool online.”

 

Shepard hardly has time to nod before Jirana has already turned around and is moving to the last emergency transporter still nearby. They climb on board and as the doors slam shut, the haste that’s been bubbling in her for the entire time the Normandy was emptied out makes Shepard turn around.

 

She weaves her way through the crowd, _excuse-me’s_ dropping from her barely parted lips as she pushes through rows and rows of people talking about what they’d just seen. Her leg doesn’t carry her fast enough, the muscles aching from misuse because of how she’s not paying attention to how she positions her foot as it hits the ground. She rounds the first corner away from the crowd and curls over, the insides of her stomach hurling to the sidewalk. Her breakfast of black coffee and nothing else did her no favors, and the bitter smell of acid makes her clench her teeth together so tight she can imagine her fillings cracking under the pressure. Cold sweat clings to her skin like a film, her stomach still trying to convulse even though there’s nothing left in her. Acid burns her throat as she squeezes her eyes shut and rests her forehead against the cold concrete of the building that is the only thing separating her and the crowd that shouldn’t see her like this.

 

_Thirty-three out of ninety-two._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me, as well as to the new readers that might stumble upon this thing of mine. You are all awesome and your support has me flabbergasted every damn time ♥ taking a moment to avoid writing my thesis and finally finishing this chapter was 100% worth it.
> 
> As always, all errors are mine. I'll see you all in the next chapter!


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